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Topic: suggestions on chicago style (Read 7848 times)

After many months of making NY style pizza I think i would like to try and make a Chicago style pizza. I purchased a thick deep dish pan a while back but never used it. Which dough recipe do you guys recommend i start with? 'DKM's Chicago Style' or 'Chicago Style Deep Dish' from the front page of this site.

Great looking pizza.I just wish Crisco was not such a bad health issue. It makes a great crust. In my Chicago I conceded to half Crisco and half olive oil. Works almost as good as the one you made Steve.

It's an Earth food. They are called Swedish meatballs. It's a strange thing, but every sentient race has its own version of these Swedish meatballs! I suspect it's one of those great universal mysteries which will either never be explained, or which would drive you mad if you ever learned the truth.

Did you like the Bonta/6-in-1 combination better than the 6-in-1 alone--or whatever other sauce you may have been using for deep dish?

Also, how big (diameter) was the pizza? In general, is there a rough relationship between the diameter of a deep-dish pizza and baking time, or do you just look for browning to know that it is done?

Yes, I liked the Bonta/6-in-1 combination better than 6-in-1 alone. I got the idea from the Stanislaus site where their Chicago Style pizza sauce recipe calls for 7/11 (similar to 6-in-1) mixed with Tomato Magic (similar to Bonta extra heavy tomato puree.) My biggest complaint up to now is that while the 6-in-1 tomatoes are excellent "raw" and spooned directly onto the pizza, there was always a slight amount of water on the cooked pizza which made the crust somewhat soggy. This moisture was from the 6-in-1 and by adding the paste-like Bonta sauce to the recipe effectively solved the watery sauce problem.

The pizza pan that I used was a 16" removable-bottom pan (featured on a different thread here on the forum). Baked it according to Deven's instructions, 450 degrees F for 25 minutes.

I have never tasted a chicago style pizza before but it does look like more of a 'meal' than a NY slice. I will be preparing my dough tonight for cooking on saturday. Hopefully on my first try i can get a decent result.

Sauce was one 28 oz. can of 6-in-1 tomatoes, about one cup of Bonta extra heavy tomato puree, three or four leaves of chopped fresh basil, two cloves of chopped fresh garlic, one teaspoon dried oregano flakes, and a touch of freshly cracked black pepper.

Sauce was not cooked, ingredients were simply mixed together in a bowl and spooned on top of the cheese.

After salivating over the most recent deep-dish pizza made by Steve, I thought I would make a scaled-down version (9-inch) of DKM's deep-dish recipe. That is, until I read Randy's post bemoaning the negative health implications of using Crisco shortening, as Steve did in his deep-dish pizza. Randy's comments got me to thinking how one might reduce the saturated fat in the typical sausage-pepperoni deep-dish pizza. It isn't the canola oil, olive oil or corn oil that is the problem. They are unsaturated fats. It's the saturated fats in sausage, pepperoni and cheese and the hydrogenated shortenings like Crisco that are considered today's villains. And the trans fatty acids in Crisco shortening. After thinking about how I might reduce the saturated fats and trans fatty acids, I ended up with the following changes to DKM's basic recipe:

-Substituted Smart Balance spread (available in almost all supermarkets) for the corn oil (Smart Balance is a solid, natural oil blend of palm fruit, soybean, canola seed and olive oils--all unsaturated fats--and no trans fatty acids. I added it directly to the flour, as is the standard approach when using solid fats).

-Pre-cooked the sausage meat until pink, and drained on paper towels until dry.

-Cooked the pepperoni slices (Hormel) in a tablespoon of olive oil until slightly crispy and drained on paper towels until the slices were completely dry.

-Added a teaspoon of light olive oil (a monounsaturate) to the pre-cooked sausage to replace the saturated fats and retain the fat "mouth feel".

-Substituted soy mozzarella cheese (Soy-Sation Lite brand) for a part of the total cheeses used (the others were standard deli mozzarella cheese and provolone cheese--and all were used in equal amounts by weight).

I also made the following changes, which were not related to the objective of reducing saturated fats or trans fatty acids:

-Scaled down DKM's recipe to produce a dough ball of a size to make a 9-inch deep-dish pizza (with a dough ball weight of around 15 ounces).

-Temperature adjusted the water to achieve a finished dough temperature of around 80 degrees F.

-Substituted a 50/50 mixture (by weight) of corn meal and corn flour for the corn meal called for in DKM's recipe (this was just an experiment to lighten the "corn" taste of the crust.)

-Substituted IDY for ADY.

-Drained the 6-in-1 tomatoes to thicken it (in an effort to avoid the excess water problem alluded to by Steve in his recent post on the merits of the Bonta/6-in-1 combination).

-Added a few drops of McCormick yellow food coloring during the dough kneading (this was a nostalgic action--to bring back my memories of the yellow Gino's crusts from the days when I lived in the Chicago area. Note: the yellow food coloring looks red coming out of the bottle, but it is yellow when it gets into the dough and is kneaded).

-Used a food processor instead of a stand mixer to do all the mixing and kneading (I used only the "pulse" switch).

The photo below shows the finished product, and the following photo shows a typical slice. The taste was very good, and I couldn't tell that there was less fat and I couldn't detect the soy mozzarella cheese. The soy mozzarella cheese blended right in with the standard mozarrella cheese and the provolone cheese (between which I had placed the soy mozzarella cheese). I regret I didn't take a photo of the pizza on edge to show its elevation (the pan I used was a dark baking pan with a side 2 inches high). By the time I thought to do so a good part of the pizza had already been eaten. However, the slice photo in the next post shows the elevation, and the yellow tint to the crust as well.

Thanks. I was hoping you wouldn't mind my playing around with your recipe the way I did. After all, there are some things that are too sacred to tamper with .

The idea for cooking the pepperoni came from Peter Reinhart's book American Pie. He also suggests boiling the pepperoni slices. What I have done in the past to achieve the same result is to place the pepperoni slices between a few paper towels and microwave. But you have to be very careful because the pepperoni cooks very quickly and can almost burn. So you have to watch the process very carefully. When done right, the paper towels will absorb most of the fat from the pepperoni.